Chapter 19
Becca
“Welcome back to Somebody Said in Sweetbriar… There’s a difference between being scared and being aware. One makes you shrink. The other makes you pay attention.”
Anight out. Fun. What was that like? It had been so long since I’d done anything recreational, I almost didn’t know what to expect.
I’d forgotten what it felt like to get ready for something that wasn’t work.
I stood in the small staff bathroom at the back of the Stop & Go, mascara in hand, and looked at myself in the mirror for a moment longer than strictly necessary.
The fluorescent light wasn’t doing me any favors, but even so—the dark circles were fading.
My shoulders weren’t up around my ears for once.
I looked, if not exactly like myself, then like someone who was getting there slowly.
I put the mascara on, slicked on some fresh lip gloss, and decided that was enough.
It was going to have to be enough. Tonight wasn’t about being fixed.
It was just about being somewhere loud and warm with two people who didn’t need me to explain anything, and letting that be sufficient for one evening.
Harper was already there when I pushed out the back door into the cool evening air, leaning against Elizabeth’s hatchback with her arms folded.
Elizabeth stood beside her, keys in hand, wearing the boots she’d been threatening to debut somewhere that wasn’t the Stop & Go for the better part of a month.
“Finally,” Elizabeth said.
“I was two minutes late.”
“In going-out time, that’s basically abandonment.” She unlocked the car. “Get in.”
Elizabeth’s aunts had taken over the store without ceremony, waving me out the door with smiles and well-wishes. The store was in good hands. I had no excuse, which was probably why Harper and Elizabeth had arranged it this way. I slung my bag into the backseat and climbed in after it.
The parking lot was quiet at this hour, the last of the evening commuters long gone, just a handful of cars sitting under the amber glow of the parking lights.
I was pulling my seatbelt across when I noticed it.
Far corner, near the pumps, engine off, angled just enough that the driver’s side caught the light from the street.
Faded silver sedan. The shape behind the wheel wasn’t on their phone, wasn’t moving, just sitting there.
But it made the back of my neck prickle.
I looked at it a second longer than I meant to.
“You’re quiet. Everything all right?” Harper asked from the front seat, half turned toward me.
“Yeah.” I pulled my seatbelt across. “Fine. Let’s go.”
Elizabeth pulled out of the lot, and I watched the sedan in the side mirror until we turned onto the road and it disappeared from view. I told myself it was nothing. Someone waiting for a friend, killing time, sitting with the radio off. It could have been anything. I almost believed it.
The Twilight Tavern sat at the edge of Honeybrook Hollow, the next town over, tucked across from a hardware store and a place that sold antiques and appeared to be permanently on the verge of closing but never quite did.
The Tavern itself was small and warm and loud in the best possible way, with string lights threaded along the ceiling and a band setting up in the corner that looked like they were going to be either very good or very chaotic, with no middle ground.
We found a table near the back, and Elizabeth flagged down a server before we’d fully sat down.
“First round’s mine,” she said, in a tone that invited no debate.
The drinks arrived. Harper lifted her glass. “To Becca,” she said, “who deserves one good night.”
“That’s a low bar,” I said.
“To Becca,” Elizabeth agreed, “who deserves one good night and is getting it whether she likes it or not.”
I laughed despite myself and clinked my glass against theirs. “Fine. To one good night, and maybe some nachos.”
“To nachos,” they chimed in, and we laughed.
The band turned out to be very good. That helped.
The conversation found its own current after our drinks arrived, drifting and loose and easy in a way that felt unfamiliar at first, like a muscle I hadn’t used in a while.
Harper told a story about Bella’s most recent school project, and Elizabeth cried with laughter, both hands pressed to her face.
I told them about Elizabeth’s coffee intervention, and Elizabeth defended herself with great conviction while laughing at the same time.
“I stand by it,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You needed the coffee. You need the coffee every day. You are a person who requires industrial quantities of coffee to function, and I will not apologize for enabling that.”
“You made me drink four cups.”
“You’re welcome.”
Harper leaned her chin on her hand, smiling at both of us with the warm, settled expression of someone exactly where she wanted to be. “Okay,” she said. “Seriously. How are you actually doing? I feel like we barely ever talk anymore.”
“I’m actually doing okay,” I said, and surprised myself by meaning it. “Better than I was. Something feels different lately. Like I’m starting to get my footing back.”
Harper studied me for a moment, her head tilted slightly, the way she did when she was deciding whether to push further or let something breathe.
Whatever she found in my face seemed to satisfy her.
“You seem different,” she said quietly. “Good different. Like you’re actually here instead of just going through the motions. ”
“I feel more present,” I admitted. “I don’t know how else to put it. For a while, everything felt like I was just managing. Getting through the day. And lately it’s started to feel less like that.”
Elizabeth pointed at me with her glass. “That’s called turning a corner.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe. I work with you every day. I noticed.” She said it simply, without fanfare, and somehow that landed more than if she’d made a fuss of it.
Harper’s expression softened. “Is any of this to do with Levi?”
“Yeah, and the job. Thanks to Elizabeth.”
“You’re welcome. Best hire ever. But forget about that. Levi?”
I turned my glass slowly on the table. “We’re talking tonight. Actually talking. About everything.”
Harper straightened slightly. “Everything, everything?” she asked, eyes darting to Elizabeth.
“Everything, everything,” I confirmed.
She and Elizabeth exchanged a look over my head that they thought was subtle and was totally not.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” they said, in unison, with identical expressions of complete innocence.
“That was coordinated.”
“We don’t know what you mean,” Elizabeth said, and took a long sip of her drink.
“We’re just pleased,” Harper added. “No further comment.”
“You’re both terrible,” I said, and laughed, and it felt easy in a way that laughing hadn’t for a while.
At some point, the music got louder, and Harper pulled us both to our feet, and we danced badly and enthusiastically in the small space near the band.
I didn’t think about the river or the laptop or Travis or any of it, not even once.
That was the thing I hadn’t realized I’d been missing.
Not just fun, exactly. The relief of being somewhere loud enough that your own thoughts couldn’t get a word in.
“You’re smiling,” Harper said, leaning close to be heard over the music.
“I’m allowed to smile, aren’t I?”
“You are.” She bumped her shoulder against mine. “It looks good on you. I’ve missed it.”
“Don’t make it weird,” I said, but I squeezed her hand. “I’m getting used to it again.”
Elizabeth reappeared from the bar with a pitcher of Coke—since none of us were here to get wasted—and a man’s phone number written on a napkin that she was studying with the detached curiosity of someone who had not asked for it but wasn’t disinterested either.
“Opinions?” she said, holding it out. “Should I be taking numbers when I only have eyes for a hot cop named Matt?”
“Oh god,” I mumbled. “He won’t know what to do with you, Elizabeth.”
“Oh, I bet he would,” she countered with a smile that could only be described as dreamy.
“Is he cute?” Harper asked, shooting an alarmed expression my way.
“Objectively, yes. Aggressively so. Which historically has been a red flag for me personally.” She folded the napkin and tucked it into her pocket. “I’ll think about it.”
“Keep your options open,” I told her.
“I always do.” She poured us our drinks and lifted her own.
We stayed until the band played their last song, and the lights came up slightly, and the warm, easy bubble of the evening began to thin at the edges.
I helped Harper into her coat, and she leaned her head briefly on my shoulder the way she had since we were teenagers, and I felt something loosen in my chest that I hadn’t fully known was tight.
“Good night?” she asked.
“Really good night,” I said, and meant it completely.
We spilled out onto the sidewalk still laughing, the cool night air hitting clean and sharp after the warmth of the Tavern. Elizabeth was mid-sentence about the napkin situation, Harper was laughing, and I was pulling my jacket closed when I saw it.
Across the street. Idling at the curb in the thin wash of a streetlight.
Faded silver sedan. The same one from before.
The laughter didn’t die exactly. I just stopped hearing it properly.
Same car. Same shape behind the wheel. Same stillness of someone who wasn’t going anywhere, just watching.
My eyes went to the plate automatically, and I had my phone out before I’d fully decided to, typing the number in while I still had it clearly in view.
Oregon plates. I repeated them twice in my head to be sure.